Benjamin Franklin almost had it right when he penned the famous certainties in life, “death and taxes.” The third, which must not be overlooked, is “hard-working parents wanting what is best for their children.” Yep, that has a nice ring to it.

Maybe ol’ Ben assumed it to be true, therefore unnecessary to include. Maybe it didn’t fit on the line of paper. Whatever the reason for the omission, we’ll forgive him. After all, he contributed quite a bit to society.

Parents, for as long as it can be remembered, have been doing their best to provide for their children. Whether it is morals or mentality, ethics or education, it is our responsibility to bestow the good habits onto the next generation(s) so that they too have the best possible opportunity to be successful. That’s all easy when we draw it up in our heads, but how am I supposed to help my child with their math fluency?

Last year, my kindergarten son had the assignment of being read to on a nightly basis. Through the years, he will have a reading log, writing journals, and plenty of work to help him grow as an academic writer and reader. There will come a time, though, when he walks up to us with a sheet of math homework; will we be able to help? Have we been talking math with him throughout his life?

Fortunately, it is an incredible time to be an educator. In our book, The Classroom Chef, Matt Vaudrey and I discuss a number of ways to engage a class full of students, build a classroom culture where it is safe to take risks, and develop a curiosity for mathematics and the world around them. In the home, though, is a different story altogether.

Or is it?

Perhaps we’re just looking for different conversations around the dinner table.

Table Talk Math

TableTalkMath.com has been started to send a weekly newsletter to interested parents who want to engage in a discussion involving math. Maybe it’s a funky picture that begs questions; perhaps it’s a conundrum that a child (and the adult) will have to ponder before making a decision of which is better; it could be a question of mental math and how each person around the table went about solving it. Either way, the goal is to have a low bar of entry into a curiosity-building math prompt that all can enjoy, even if it’s only for a few minutes a week.

Included in every newsletter will be a prompt, some tips to get the conversation going, and hopefully a few words of advice from the creator/contributor. As parents, you want what is best for your child(ren) and this is one more small bit of support.
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To sign up for the newsletter, head over to tabletalkmath.com and register today. Also, feel free to follow me on Twitter at @TableTalkMath and @jstevens009 for an occasional post that gets me thinking. If you have a contribution that you would like to see featured, email me at [email protected].

Throughout the course of The Classroom Chef, Matt and I worked to show you ways to add value to your lessons, all while building a risk-taking culture. While one of our goals in writing was to share how we have matured as educators, both in pedagogy and in practice, another was to get you thinking deeply about why your students are being asked to complete a certain task and how that is being conveyed. This naturally led us to reflect on some of our earlier lessons and handouts, leaving us vulnerable in the hopes of getting better.

Planning Your Own Vacation

Yeah, the title pretty much sums it up. The goal was for the students to work with unit rates and decimal operations to plan a vacation, but it was clear that I had covered pretty much all of it. This was scaffolded so that the student who struggled the most could follow along with the lesson. My biggest mistake here was forgetting the rest of the class when designing the handout and creating a lesson that pigeonholed any true creativity from my students. Equipped with a cart of broken-down laptops, my students were able to get through the lesson, but I wish I knew then what I know now; here’s the lesson handout, dug up from the classroom cookbook of 2007:

I’d still like to believe that the idea was a good one. After all, giving students ownership of their vacation and having them plan it teaches them a lot more than unit rates and allows me to see some of their passions. The next time I teach this lesson, it'll go a little somethin' like this...

First, I would start with a Would You Rather that focuses on travel. For example:

I really don't want to leave a lot more autonomy at the fingertips of the students, all while asking a common theme to be maintained. Oh, and it doesn't hurt to slap some reality onto the class that $1000 doesn't go very far when you're on vacation... Yikes.

So what do you think? Where are the holes in this lesson? What would you do differently? Is this an upgrade, or simply changing the focus? I'm genuinely interested in your thoughts on this, so drop a comment, Tweet at me @jstevens009 with the hashtag of #classroomchef. Help me improve.

Happy "So Help Me I'll Pull This Car Over" Fishing